The Real History of The Poverty Tours

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

The Real History of The Poverty Tours

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The hostility that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have for President Obama is so transparent that if it were glass we would have walked right through it and cut ourselves to shreds. These two are shameless, and it’s not only a national disgrace how the establishment media is allowing them to prance around posing as the savior of the poor and middle class, but they're actually helping them to perpetuate this fraud by providing them constant coverage and millions of dollars worth of publicly supported air time.
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These two thought that they were gonna become the Grand Dragons of the Black Community - which is a very profitable gig when you’re in the business of selling ALEC-connected corporations access to the Black community like Tavis Smiley. Tavis is the biggest corporate shill in the Black community. He fronts for Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, Exxon/Mobile, Allstate Ins., Nationwide Ins., etc. - a veritable who’s who of the corporations that are most responsible for victimizing the poor and middle class in the country, and who are spending millions of dollars to obstruct minority voter rights. That’s what makes it so ironic that they’re trying to portray themselves as the saviors of "the poor minorities."
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During Obama’s first campaign for president Smiley and West had already hitched their wagons to Hillary Clinton. She was 37 points ahead of Obama in the Black community at the time, so they were all set to gain the clout, prestige, and riches of having presidential access and being acknowledged as the new grand viziers of the Black community. But then, Obama won the election - in spite of their most ardent efforts - and caught them by surprise. In fact, Cornel West tried to jump the fence and began campaigning for Obama when it became clear that Obama might actually win, but Obama wasn’t having it. That's what caused the controversy over West not being invited to the inaugural celebration.
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At the time, West tried to frame the issue like Obama was an ingrate for not inviting him to the inauguration after he campaigned for him. But he failed to mention the fact that less than an hour after Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States West went on national television and told the Black community that Obama couldn’t be trusted.

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That’s right - on the very day that Obama went to Springfield, Illinois to maximize the historic significance of announcing his candidacy for president in the shadow of Lincoln's former statehouse instead of coming on Tavis' "State of the Black Union" jibfest, West stood up and did an impassioned rant indicating that Obama couldn’t be trusted to be president because he didn’t come on the Tavis Smiley show, as though Tavis was the gatekeeper of the Black community - and all the while Tavis is standing there grinnin' like a chess cat as though they'd caught Obama committing some sort of unconscionable act.
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Look at the video below and notice how entitled West sounds, as though it was more appropriate for Obama to come kiss Tavis’ ring than to announce his candidacy in the shadow of Lincoln’s former statehouse. I remember becoming slack-jawed at his unmitigated arrogance. Up until that moment I had been a big fan of both Tavis and West, but that was when I first realized that they were egomaniacal fools. That was also the morning that I started investigating them, and I’ve written nearly 30 articles on them since.
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The video is also ironically prophetic. Notice how even as West is lecturing the nation on how Obama is surrounding himself with people who can’t be trusted, you can see Wells Fargo and Exxon/Mobil logos floating by in the background behind him. What makes that so prophetically ironic is Tavis was later involved in the Wells Fargo "Ghetto Loans" scam, where Wells Fargo ended up having to settled a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice agreeing to pay poor and middle-class minorities $175 million as a result of the scam. This is the biggest scandal EVER perpetrated by a Black man on the Black community, but the establishment media is refusing to cover it. That’s why I’ve become so fixated on bringing the machinations of these two demagogues to the attention of the Black community.

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So the Bottom Line is this - when people like myself criticize Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, or Boyce Watkins, we’re not criticizing them because they’re critical of President Obama; our problem with them is they’re cherry-picking their facts and telling half-truths to promote their own agenda.
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HEY, AREN'T YOU THE SAME GUY
WHO SAID I COULDN'T BE TRUSTED? 

A prime example of that is they are going out of their way NOT to tell the Black community that the United States Constitution gives sole control of spending to the United States House of Representatives, which is controlled by the Republicans. So the only way that President Obama can spend any money to assist the Black community, or anyone else, is to get the Republican House to go along with him.
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That’s why it’s so important for the president to hold together a coalition of Blacks, women, gays, Hispanics, and every other segment of the American population. He needs ALL of us to place pressure on the Republicans to loosen the purse strings in order for him to get anything done. So anytime you hear Tavis, West, or Watkins pointing their finger at what President Obama is doing for any other segment of the population, they’re doing you a disservice.
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Here’s how politics works - "you support me when I need you, and I’ll support you when you need me." So whenever President Obama does anything for other segments of the population, he’s building up political capital so he can help you. But, of course, he doesn’t discuss what he’s doing for the Black community for a very good reason - as Cornel says himself (when it’s convenient), "Race Matters."
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These gentlemen know full well that if President Obama runs around bragging about what he’s doing for the Black community, the Republicans are going to use that as leverage to tear his coalition apart. They would tell women, gays, Hispanics, and everyone else in America that Obama doesn’t care about them; all he wants to do is help his own people, and that message hurts the Black community. Don’t these so-called intellectuals recognize that? If they don’t, they’re dumb. If they do, that means that they’re purposely trying to mislead you. The question, then, is why?
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So the fact is, when people like Tavis, West, and Watkins run around telling you that the proof that President Obama is not working for you is that he refuses to throw his fist in the air, these people are working against you, not for you - and they know it. You see, their primary agenda is NOT about helping the Black community. Their agenda is about tearing President Obama down, and again, that hurts you. But they don't care - and that's the problem.

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A Question For Both Tavis Smiley and Cornel West 

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-question-for-both-tavis-smiley-and.html

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Poverty Pimp, Inc.

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2013/01/poverty-pimp-inc.html

Eric L. Wattree 
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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The Tavis/West Poverty Pimp Tour

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

The Tavis/West Poverty Pimp Tour

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Why Attack a Sleeping Sentry Before Repelling the Invading Hordes?

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While Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have the right idea in terms of the need to confront power, it’s their motives and the hypocrisy of their agenda that I have a problem with. They’re clearly being self-serving and purposely divisive, which plays right into the hands of those who continue to subjugate us.
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The primary reason that our government doesn't work, and the institutions that are supposed to be protecting our rights have become monuments to the maintenance of the status quo, is WE, THE PEOPLE have allowed ourselves to become so distracted by the corporate promotion of social hedonism that we're allowing the most ruthless among us to take control of government.
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As I point out in a message to the group, CARMA (Citizens Against Reckless Middle Class Abuse), the poor and middle class will never be secure in their homes, their standard of living, or their jobs until they ensure that their politicians, unions officials, and all other representatives of the people are insecure in theirs.
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Keeping the people divided is the coin of the corporatist realm, and I seriously suspect that Tavis is working in concert with the corporations that he continues to shill for - Wal-Mart, Exxon, Nationwide, Wells Fargo, etc. As for West, if he was even close to as intelligent as the corporate media would have us believe, he’d surely recognize the relevance of the Abraham Lincoln maxim that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” So West is either working in collusion with Tavis’ turncoat agenda, or he’s incredibly stupid for failing to recognize that social manipulators have been keeping the people under thumb with the tactic of social division for centuries - if not eons.
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Cornel West has been on the losing side of the last three presidential elections - in 2000 he supported Ralph Nader, in 2004, Al Sharpton, and in 2008 he jumped back and forth between Tavis Smiley's criticism of Obama and Obama's camp, depending upon which way the political winds happened to be blowing at the time. That's why Obama has little use for him.
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The fact that West is always aligned with losing agendas, and his efforts tend to always be detrimental to the poor and middle class, should clearly demonstrate that West's assessment of the political environment is based more on some obscure theoretical construct than what's practical and in the best interest of the people. He seems to view politics as more of an academic experiment than what actually puts meat and potatos on the table of the poor and middle class. Then when his experiment fails and the people are left miserable and hungry, he says, "Oh well, maybe next time." Then he disappears back into the comfortable embrace of academia to charge outrageously high speaking fees to explain why the poor and middle class don't have meat and potatos.
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So the fact is, the people need to ignore self-serving demagogues like Tavis and West and simply take a lesson from the Tea Party. We need to strictly control those we allow in office and make them immediately accountable for their behavior, period. Thus the problem is not the system; the problem is our apathy, and our failure to control the system. 
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The government is SUPPOSED to be us, but we've shirked our responsibility. We’ve allowed ourselves to become more interested in Kobe’s jump shot than we are the education of our children, the future well being of our families, and even the survival of the nation as a whole. We’ve also allowed corporate instigators to create so much animosity among the people that we’ve become more interested in hating one another than we are in coming together to protect our common interests - and Tavis and West are playing a major role in that.
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We do need to get Obama’s attention, however - at this point that’s a given. But our approach should be through educating the people, not by antagonizing half of the population against the other. That’s counterproductive, and it’s also counterrevolutionary - and believe me, the turmoil that’s taking place here in the United States, in the Middle East and Africa, and now in the United Kingdom, clearly attests to the fact that we’re currently knee-deep in a global, class revolution.
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But people like Tavis and West are advocating that we live in a fantasy. They want us to believe that we can lay all of our problems at the feet of Obama. The problem with that is, when you live in a fantasy you're forced to view reality as a myth, so they're completely ignoring the real culprit, and that's the malevolent agenda of the GOP - in fact, they're helping to promote that agenda by spurring division among the people. They’re engaging in the very same kind of hysterically flawed, self-serving, and demagogic behavior that Ralph Nader did during the 2000 election, which led directly to the misery of the Bush era, and ultimately, to the situation that we currently find ourselves.
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Those of us who are students of political history have seen this Tavis/West demagoguery before. They’re following directly in the footsteps of Ralph Nader, one of the worst turncoats in American history.
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During the 2000 election Nader should have pushed his agenda during the Democratic primaries, then if his position was rejected, he should have fallen in line and supported the Democratic candidate if for no other reason than to support the public good. He should have understood that it's foolish to become so disenchanted with the Bogeyman that you elect the Devil. But instead, when his position was rejected, he took it as a personal rejection and acted like a petulant child. He ignored the greater good and purposely sabotaged the Democratic agenda, along with all of the causes that he was supposed to be so passionate about all of his life, and took his ball (and votes) and went home.
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Nader's treachery in this matter negated everything that he ever accomplished in his life. He also betrayed the fact that everything he ever accomplished was done purely for self-promotion and not for the public good, as we had previously assumed. His miserable act of treachery during the 2000 election was purposely designed to help George Bush to win the election. He purposely set out to deny the Democrats a victory in retaliation for rejecting him as a candidate. He placed his petulance before the best interest of the nation. That makes him just as culpable as Bush and Cheney for the death of over a million Iraqi citizens, and the maiming and death of thousands of American troops. He's also partially responsible for the nations current economic condition, which is a direct result of the Bush administration’s purposeful plundering of the United States treasury.
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The Nader/West coalition claim that Nader simply stood on principles, and in an attempt to elude responsibility for bringing George W. Bush into power they contend that it wasn't Nader's fault that Bush won. Their contention is, "Gore simply didn't fight hard enough for a recount." But the underlying message to that argument is, Gore didn't fight hard enough to undo the damage that we'd done. Because the facts are clear. Bush won the election in Florida by 537 votes, and Nader took away 97,488 votes. So Nader's personal "principles" led directly to the death and misery of literally millions of innocent people. Thus, Ralph Nader should be remembered as one of the most miserable, self-serving snakes in all of U. S. History.
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Tavis and West are now engaged in the very same sort of treachery as Nader, and it may very well lead to the same result, or worse, because you see, this time we’re going to be left with a fascist state. Look around you. The GOP has already turned the state of Michigan into Michighanistan. So what are we gonna do, refuse to vote for Obama in the next election and turn the country over to fascists? It sounds to me like that’s eactly what Tavis and West are advocating.
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That brings me to yet another reason why the activities of Tavis and West send up a red flag for  me. Notice that nearly all of their hostility is directed toward Barack Obama. They’re saying little or nothing about the GOP, who are DIRECTLY engaged in undermining the poor and middle class. So I have to ask a very simple question. Why are they focusing all of their energy and resources toward attacking a sleeping sentry, while completely ignoring the invading hordes?
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So something is very wrong here, or at the very least, tactically inept.
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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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President Obama, Cornel West, and Poverty Pimps

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

President Obama, Cornel West, and Poverty Pimps

Many critics are pointing their finger at President Obama for failing to address various issues in the Black community, but that's not his job. The Black community is going to have to stop sitting around waiting for a Messiah to solve our problems. It’s the Black community’s responsibility to address Black issues, no one else’s. We are adults and the second largest consumer group in America, so we don’t need anybody to help us turn our community around. We have more than enough resources to do the job ourselves.

Now, that isn’t to say that we shouldn’t continue to fight to get our piece of America’s pie, but the only way that even that can be accomplish is to change our way of thinking. Our primary problem is, we’ve allowed self-serving poverty pimps to convince us that instead of becoming actively engaged in addressing our own issues, we need them to come to our rescue and twist political arms.

That’s exactly what we don’t need. We don’t need one voice speaking for millions; we need millions speaking with one voice. But their motive is obvious. Spokesman-n-Chief for the Black community is one of the best paying gigs in town. But adults don’t need that. Only children wait around for their daddies to get home to handle their problems. Adults handle their own business through mature and responsible action, and that includes taking the time to vote.

Is it Obama’s fault that instead of becoming involved in our children’s education we’d rather sit around and let them be corrupted by the values of hip hop videos? It is not. Knowledge is free. There’s just as much knowledge in the corner library as there is at Harvard University, and there’s even more on the internet, so how is our aversion to knowledge anyone else’s fault but our own?

Likewise, it’s not Obama’s fault that we refuse to vote. The primary reason that we can’t get any attention from politicians is because they can depend on one thing - given a choice, the vast majority of us would rather sit home and admire Kobe’s jump shot than get out and vote for a better future for our children. That accounts for why we have so many potholes in the hood, and little support for our schools. Why should politicians waste any money, time, or effort on us when they can spend those resources across town on people they can depend on to turn out and vote for them?

And finally, it is not Obama’s fault that we let jackleg preachers come in every Sunday and take badly needed revenue out of the community and into the suburbs, while during the week their “houses of God” sit there vacant. Society can’t make them open up those churches during the week and hire unemployed mothers to provide affordable childcare for working mothers. Neither society, nor Obama, can make them do that. That’s our job.

Now, with regard to Cornel West. I’ve lost a lot of respect for that man every since it became obvious that he’s sitting on Tavis Smiley’s knee with Tavis’ hand in his back. They didn’t even wait for Obama to be sworn into office before they started criticizing him - and their criticism had absolutely nothing to do with the Black community. Tavis’ criticism was ego-driven, and West, with all of his alleged intellect, chose to settle into his role of Tavis’ trusty sidekick.

Smiley and West took their show on the road right after Obama refused to appear on Tavis’ corporate sponsored dog-and-pony show to kiss Tavis’ ring. Tavis seemed to have been suffering from the delusion that he was some sort of self-appointed representative of the Black people, and that Obama had an obligation to go through him to gain access to the Black community. And just like a little lapdog, Cornel fell right in line, faithfully caressing Tavis’ delusion of grandeur.

That’s when I first began to recognize that Cornel’s intellectual competence couldn’t possibly be commensurate with the hype in the corporate media. The fact that I initially bought into that hype taught me a very important lesson, however. It taught me to keep my own ego in check, because it became clear that I obviously didn’t corner the market on wisdom, knowledge, or intellect myself. After all, I’d bought into the hype, and failed to take the time to choose and assess my own heroes. Just like the rest of the Black community, I made the foolish mistake of allowing others to do that for me. But I won’t make that mistake again.

Let’s take a look at these two gentlemen. Tavis has been going all over the country talking about accountability and making snide allusions to the fact that President Obama was lacking in that area. Cornel West was doing the same, but he also liked to talk about corporate plutocracies and oligarchies. Yet, even as Smiley was holding court in his “State of the Black Union” dog-and-pony show, the logos of some of the worst abusers of Black people - indeed, abusers of all of the poor and middle class in the country - were emblazoned all over the wall in the background. Tavis was also active in trying to get the people of Inglewood, CA to let Walmart come into the community, right along, I might add, with their anti union, anti medical benefits, and promotion of foreign products business philosophy - which of course, would have put many small and minority entrepreneurs out of business.

Where’s the accountability in that, and why didn’t the good “Brother” West discuss this issue with his buddy? He’s an intellectual, so certainly he saw the long-term impact of what Tavis was advocating would have on the Black community. But obviously, West’s personal interest was in conflict with the interest of the community, and the community lost.

So just because someone wears a natural, and is running around saying, “Brother, this and Brother, that,” that doesn’t mean that their personal interest and the interest of the Black community coincide. The same is true of people who or embraced by the very same media that’s dragging the Black community through the mud, or who go around saying “folk” instead of “folks” for effect. Many people like this tend to be more self-serving than they are servants of the community. Thus, these are the last people we should listen to, because in order to promote their own interests they tend to tell us what we want to hear, rather than what we need to hear.

And what the community needs to hear is, Obama’s shortcomings have nothing to do with any failings on his part in the Black community. Where Obama is falling down on the job is by failing to aggressively confront the most insidious enemy of the American people since the civil War - the modern GOP leadership. His tendency to think that “compromise” is the solution to every problem is allowing the GOP to drag America back into a corpo/fascist-inspired dark age. While his speech on the budget gives indications that he’s beginning to recognize that fact, it was conspicuously short on details, and as we all know, that’s where the Devil resides. So we’ll see.

But it’s important that we remain focused and not allowing ourselves to be distracted by either politicians, or poverty pimps. What we must all keep in mind is that race was the last war, while the war that we’re currently engaged in is about class. The GOP is coming after us all this time, and they’re not taking any prisoners. That’s what we should be focused on, and that’s the issue upon which we should hold Obama’s feet to the fire.

While Cornel West often speaks to this issue, we must remember that he has an agenda. His close association with Tavis Smiley gives him the credibility of a man ranting about fascism after just having lunch with Mussolini.

Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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